Garcetti, Supervisors Dispute Funding for Reviving Officer-Involved Shooting Unit : County: Several board members blame the D.A. for ending program that put prosecutors on ‘roll-out’ team. But he insists that they need to provide the money.

Los Angeles County supervisors said Tuesday that Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti--and not the board--killed a program three years ago that had sent prosecutors racing to the scenes of police shootings.

“The D.A. made the decision not to continue the roll-out unit,” said Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. “It was his decision and his decision alone.”

In the wake of the burgeoning police corruption probe at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division--which includes allegations of at least two questionable shootings--top city and county officials are calling for the revival of the district attorney’s officer-involved shooting unit.

And county supervisors say the district attorney has plenty of money to pay for the so-called roll-out program, which has long been opposed by many police officers.

Garcetti has publicly expressed support for the roll-out unit, but says he needs more money from the county.

“It costs money, and I need that money from the Board of Supervisors,” Garcetti said Tuesday. “If in fact the Board of Supervisors will come up with $1.4 million, I will reinitiate the roll-out program.”

Yaroslavsky said he plans to bring a motion at next week’s board meeting asking Garcetti to revive the program--and to pay for it out of his existing budget.

County budget documents cited by Yaroslavsky show that Garcetti ran a $5.8-million surplus this year and has $5.5 million more in asset-forfeiture money.

“Boy, that’s news to me,” Garcetti responded. “If I had that money, I’d do it in an instant.”

Former state Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp, who created the roll-out teams when he was district attorney in the 1970s, says that the roll-out squad was effectively crippled by his successor, Robert Philibosian, who slashed its funding to the bone. Philibosian could not be reached late Tuesday.

The roll-out team raised such ire among LAPD officers that their union picketed Van de Kamp’s offices. But the program did result in a decline in the number of officer-involved shootings, Van de Kamp said.

He said it surprised him that Garcetti, an original member of the squad, decided to cut it in 1996, after the district attorney’s budget was capped at about $250 million.

Since then, however, the district attorney’s budget has grown by about $100 million. Still, budget records reveal, Garcetti never asked supervisors for money to reinstate the roll-out program.

The budget records show that Garcetti instead pushed for money on other programs. Garcetti has asked supervisors for $800,000 to staff a team to combat truancy, $4.2 million for pay raises for his prosecutors and $89,000 for a new office spokesman.

“My position has always been that we should have a roll-out team,” said Garcetti at a packed news conference earlier this week. “The only reason we stopped the roll-out team was for financial reasons.

“So, if the Board of Supervisors can find the additional moneys necessary to implement it, we would do it immediately,” Garcetti said. “I specifically told them . . . that I either had the choice of prosecuting gang members who were committing violent offenses, sex offenders, child abusers, or I could go forward with the officer-involved shooting--what we called roll-out program.”

But supervisors disputed the district attorney’s version Tuesday, pointing out that Garcetti himself makes the decisions about which programs to kill or continue.

Yaroslavsky said Garcetti is “in the best financial situation he’s ever been in during all my years here.” He said Garcetti should reinstate the roll-out team immediately.

Garcetti’s plea of poverty evoked skepticism from others in the Hall of Administration.

“We don’t get that involved in the financial operations of the D.A. at that level,” said Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke. “At that time, he was concerned with certain salaries for upper levels of the D.A. and stuff like that.”